Our Agency's Reunion Picnic

We traveled to our adoption agency today to celebrate with other adoptees and their families the 27 years that this agency has been doing Korean Adoptions. It was a reunion with the older adoptees with the younger ones along with their parents, grandparents, etc. We had the founders of the Korean program for our agency present as well for the picnic. It was a bittersweet moment when I learned of them closing their program a few weeks before this event.

I made something fitting for Chuseok. I made 녹두나물 for the picnic. I didn't know that this was typically served as a part of the traditional Chuseok foods but I learned that the morning of the picnic while searching for the Hangul online for the name of the dish I made. How completely fitting don't you think??

At our table we had my parents, one of my friends who adopted 20+ years ago through this agency, her two girls (my girls' mentors) and one of her daughters' friends. Unfortunately Ryan's mentor was busy and couldn't attend the event. I managed to share a chair with my husband and Katie as I don't think there was enough room at our table for another chair.

The potluck picnic food varied from 만두, 잡채, my 녹두나물, to taco salad, fried chicken, brownies, Ggae Gwa Ja, chocolate chip cookies, and more.

We saw friends of ours there from the parenting class that we took at our agency and friends of ours who adopted as well from our agency so that was really nice although we did alot of running around with our kids. We saw some familiar faces from 무지개 캠프 which was extremely wonderful.

I had one mother come up to me while I was waiting in the art room for some supplies and told me that she absolutely loved Rising Stars at 무지개 캠프 this year. She got alot of information out of it and really appreciated all of the effort that myself plus the two other mothers put into that class of 무지개 캠프. Hearing this from another mother who remembered me from camp was just heartwarming. I am so glad that we made such a huge impression on this mother.

The kids had a blast there. The girls sat with their Korean mentors and ate their meals. Katie even went up with her mentor, Kathleen, to get some desserts (I believe it was twice). After the lunch, we listened to the speakers talk about the history of our agency. I videotaped the speeches as it was that important to me and, I feel, to the kids as they get older.

After the speeches, we worked on painting the ceramic tiles with the help from The Pottery Place. They also had a bouncy bounce for the kids however my kids had fun just running around the gym.

We had a family picture taken with our social worker as she has been there for us for all three kids. Afterwards we had our last post placement visit with her. I need to pick out pictures, write letters to the foster moms and such yet, our last visit is done (at least for now with our social worker). I know that down the road when things crop up, we know that she will be there for us to answer our questions, to help us understand the adoption emotional rollercoaster that our children might be going through and more.

While it's a bittersweet moment for us and our adoption agency, Jeff and I have no fear that our social worker will be there for us when we need her. We hope so much that this potluck picnic will become an annual event. And I know other families would love to see this as well...